DERAILMENT LINKED TO SPLIT IN RAIL REPAIRED SAME DAY

By PETER APPLEBOME

Published: November 14, 1983

MARSHALL, Tex., Nov. 13—
The derailment of an Amtrak passenger train that killed four people Saturday morning occurred when a section of rail that had been repaired earlier in the day apparently split apart, officials said here today.

Donald Engen, one of the five members of the National Transportation Safety Board, said it would probably take a week for a full investigation of the cause of the crash. A final report from the board will not be ready for at least four months, he said.

But preliminary examination, he said, indicated that the tracks split apart as the first passenger car on the 11-car train passed over it.

He said the board would also investigate whether the train had been traveling too fast for conditions. Passengers who were on board said they thought the train had sped up just before the accident. Irregularity in Track

Tim Hogan, director of public relations for the Missouri Pacific Railroad, which owns and maintains the tracks, said that before the crash electronic sensors on a freight train picked up an irregularity in the track where the derailment later occurred and that a work crew was dispatched. Mr. Hogan said that repair work had been completed about 9:10 A.M. and that a freight train had traveled over the section of rail between that time and the time of the Amtrak crash, 10:15.

''The train derailed because of the break, but there's probably more to it,'' Bob Buckhorn, a spokesman for the Federal safety board, said to The Associated Press. ''A train can pass over a break in the rail without derailing.'' Track to Be Analyzed

Mr. Engen said today that sections of the track, formed of high-alloy steel, were being transported to the Union Pacific Railroad laboratory in Omaha, Neb., for metallurgical analysis.

Twenty-two people remained hospitalized today, one in critical condition.

The derailment was the second worst in Amtrak's 12-year history, a spokesman told A.P. R. Clifford Black said 11 people died in a derailment in Salem, Ill., on June 10, 1971.

The train was righted Saturday night and was moved to a railroad yard in Marshall from the accident site about nine miles north of here.

Mr. Engen today said the train, which had been bound for San Antonio from Chicago, had been going 75 miles per hour and its allowable speed was 78 miles per hour.

Asked whether the speed was proper, considering the work that had been done on the track, he said, ''We're going to look at that area.'' Woman Stricken Before Crash

Edward Smith, a passenger from East St. Louis, Mo., said that just before the crash an announcement over the train's public address system called for a doctor and indicated a woman on board had suffered a seizure. He said he had felt the train speed up.

Elaine Wencka of Dallas said she had been among those who had tried to help the woman who had the seizure. Mrs. Wencka could not say whether the train had sped up. But she vividly recalled the confusion and uncertainty she had felt after the call for a doctor.

''I don't know how, but I knew something was terribly wrong,'' she said today from her hospital bed at Marshall Memorial Hospital here. ''I got nervous and shaky and I knew I wanted to get off the train. Then we crashed.''